re: #174 A Mom Anon

I was referring to libertarians, I should have been more clear. A physical illness is one thing with an entirely different life/death aspect.

Then you didn’t understand the jist of what I said.

I think the same mechanism is at work in someone changing their worldview on economic fairness and on cancer treatment. In both cases, changing the view leads to depressed mood in many people even when they say that the change has been correct. Simply saying libertarians are selfish is kina pointless; libertarianism accepts selfishness as an axiom.

If you’re arguing that people are drawn towards libertarianism because they’re selfish, then I think it’s far more complicated than that and there’s a lot of various paths by which someone can become libertarian. Were they selfish before they became libertarians, or are they more selfish now than they were before because of the influence of libertarianism? I’d argue it’s very often the latter, but we treat it as though it’s the former.